December 11, 2018
Registration is now open for the March 7, 2019 sitting of the CSPA Predictive Modeling – Methods and Techniques examination. This exam will again be administered online by TrueAbility with in person proctors. In order to have their registration processed, registrants must be members in good standing of The CAS Institute.
The CAS Institute administered the first sitting of this exam on September 13th. Amy Brener, Director of The CAS Institute, asked the candidates and their proctors for their feedback on their experience. The feedback she received from the candidates was overwhelmingly positive.
Matt Carpenter is a Pricing Analyst at American Integrity Insurance, a Florida homeowners insurer, said, “Overall I felt this exam was a positive experience for me. I enjoyed studying for this exam and look forward to applying this knowledge to benefit my company.” He added, “We are just starting to explore using predictive analytics in our work, which is why I decided to pursue the CSPA. I am looking forward to continuing to learn about predictive analytics with the help of iCAS and the leaders of my company.”
Another candidate said, “The study materials themselves. . . opened a new world to me that I had previously failed to understand. Prior to the exam, the topics and general framework of predictive modeling were fuzzy and undefined.”
Sang Cho, who attained his FCAS credential in May, 2018, has worked for the past two years in underwriting predictive analytics for Verisk/ISO. He said, “It was a great experience for me. This will be a great tool for actuaries/underwriters to be exposed to the modeling experience.” He added, “I am happy that this exam was administered and executed without a major issue. I think that TrueAbility is a great vendor to administer the exam. There was almost no lag while taking the exam and almost everything was functioning properly.”
The candidates also provided recommendations for improving the study materials and exam. The exam committee has looked at these suggestions and is making some changes to future materials and exam offerings as a result. For example, we have released the CSPA Exam 3 Study Kit for March 7, 2019 Sitting for purchase that pulls out just the required chapters from the 5 assigned textbooks. In addition, the updated syllabus provides weightings for each section of the examination so that candidates will have a better sense of how much of each content area will be tested. Finally, we are preparing a .pdf version sample exam to provide examples of the kinds of questions that will be asked.
